Why did Dragon's Dogma remain niche while Dark Souls was such a huge success?

You are a genuine fucking retard.

Nice hallucination, bro.

funny thing is that Dark Souls is just as unfinished but the part that is unfinished is the second half which is long after player's have gotten invested in the game instead of having the unfinished parts mixed in throughout like in Dragon's Dogma.

it's also a god damn MMO in Japan

There is a DD MMO in Japan, but it's based on the universe of DD, not the same game as DD itself. DD1 (and 2) were never intended to be real-time multiplayer, just have the Pawn system.
Tard.

No anon. Not a single piece of the game is fleshed out. NPC interactions are all shallow and half passed. The world is a giant hallway and is empty and evo8d of design for no reason. The combat should have had way more more breadth and options, but remains basic. The towns are flat and boring. No depth, no real design or thought put into the. Pawn system is lack luster and needs wah more depth.

Just all of it. Even traversal feels like it's missing stuff.

DS gained a reputation for being the "le difficult prepare to die xD" game, undeserved as other games were out before even DeS which were hard too, like DMC4 and Ninja Gaiden II. DD meanwhile came out half a year after Skyrim and most just discounted it as some lazy rip off. Some who played it were even wanting that and were disappointed it wasn't.

like DMC4

That game is not hard.

Some who played it were even wanting that and were disappointed it wasn't

Came here to say this. Early reviews were plagued with normalfags who played babby's first RPG and thought DD would be more of the same. Instead they got janky Monster Hunter.
It's a shame, because despite its flaws I really like DD. If it had been more successful we might have gotten a more fully realised DD2 that actually managed what the first game set out to do.

Better memes and marketing, all there is to it

DD wears too much Japan on its sleeve, it scares off the normgroids.

I remember those early reviews
People claiming DD1 was ripping off Dragon Age Origins party system and trying to copy the name for visibility and whacky shit like that
Normies are a black plague from which death is the only cure

It's amazing how DD gets threads daily on Anon Babble whether its to hate it or to idolise it. It just goes to show how good the original was.

No it's just a shitty unfinished game with a terribly uninspired look.

dark souls plays better ultimately
dark souls damage/elements/armor is good, dragons dogma flat damage defense is absolute dogshit
dark souls gear/progression can be exciting, too many people end up using the same stuff for all of dragons dogma, or feeling to stagnated in their vocation with little incentive to swap, or finding weapons that are all reskins of eachother with more damage. Or armors that are literally nothing but a defense number
dark souls has some great memorable fights, dragons dogma peaks at Devilfire Grove and then stays extremely stale in enemy encounters literally forever until you reach the DLC
DS doesnt bore you 24/7 with the exact same wolf/harpy/goblin encounter in its equivalent of the overworld experience, instead youre exploring some new exciting uncharted territory with completely different foes than what you find in other places. Its like if the very best moments of Bitterblack Isle were the whole game
in DS1 you will have grown very fond of the cool interconnected world since the very start. in DD1 you will be ferrystoning everywhere and hope you dont ever have to sprint to some remote location filled with goblins and harpies along the way for the 5th time

last but not least, at the end of DS1 you felt like at the end of a great huge journey and you couldnt stop thinking about it. At the end of DD1 you felt like you had an unfinished game

Twice now it's repeated the same issues almost exactly. It has garbage world building, generic aesthetic, bad story, unmemorable characters, bad quests, bad itemization, low enemy variety, and poor performance for its release systems. It has the makings of a good or interesting combat system but everything else built around it is bad.

Funny how making the game more Western made it worse in 2.

stop speaking so confidently about things you nothing about, retard-kun

Honestly, I feel like it only needed like, 3-4 more large dungeons spattered around the map and a couple more enemy types in the world map and it would've been perfectly fine
Some of the systems are goofy as fuck and the skills aren't really that well balanced, but those things aren't nearly as important as actually having enough shit to do

It's a really good 6/10 proof of concept. Too bad it will never be fleshed out into a good game.

DS has a very standard challenge to it and isn't so open ended that you're expected to make your own fun with the game's systems. It also was split into "stages" so it stayed more focused.

Made up history lmao

This game died when they added difficulty levels. The original 1.0 release has no easy mode. It was added when crybabies complained and said it was too hard. And guess what? They still didn't buy it. I even went to the official Capcom forums and begged them not to do it. serves Capcom right it didn't sell and they still haven't learned. Imagine Dark Souls/Elden Ring with an easy mode.

dark souls had better marketing and wasn't the first souls title. demons' souls already existed and had a fanbase, marketing for the game really sold it as a difficult game for hardcore gamers and people wanted to prove their gamer cred. the second souls game no longer being an exclusive also helped push it to a wider audience.
dark souls has more noticeable progression/ways of feeling progress. bosses are the highlight and really delineate how far you are in the game. beating a new boss really feels like an accomplishment and you feel your progression with level ups and new areas opening up. most monsters and bosses in dragon's dogma don't feel like that. there are a few key moments that stand out, but 95% of bosses showing up in the wild for random encounters with big enemies really takes away from the feeling of progression that normies crave from videogames, not to mention that rarely is your ability to explore new areas locked behind the defeat of thosee enemies.
dark souls is more of a series of pathways, rather than big open areas. DD's world almost feels more like a bethesda world map but is not filled with enough to justify it.
DD is a very easy game. BBI helped fix that and was a step in the right direction toward what could be GOTYAY, but base game was very easy.
dark souls also has more deep/cryptic lore for autists to latch onto and make a million video essays about. DD tried, but it isn't interesting enough, there is not a wide enough breadth of lore to truly explore, and even the autists didn't care enough to even make a "DID YOU KNOW!" factoid about the game's title and what it actually means (not that it is that difficult to understand once you beat the seneschal, but it autists will do anything to try and prove what they know with little factoids).

overall i love both. dragon's dogma i like more but can recognize that dark souls is the better crafted game.

dark souls gear/progression can be exciting

Lol

Dark Souls:

Straight to the point

nonstop action, bosses, horror and deaths

Finding new gear constantly, all of which tend to be extremely unique, giving players fashion and build variety

an almost untold story that still manages to feel like it was narrated, solely by the environmental design and bosses

Dragon's Dogma:

slow burn, high intensity encounters are few and far apart

barely any gear upgrades or fashion until lategame / bitter black

a fair amount of grind unless you cheese high level enemies

short story that hardly resonates until end

I love dragon's dogma, but I can be honest with it
- the world was tiny and empty
- cool & unique quests/encounters were too rare
- not enough rpg
- not enough unique armor/weapon designs
The game feels unfinished, anyone who played it will tell you this

That's all i wanted from 2 and i didn't get shit.

Because Capcom didn't give it a second chance.

Demon souls was my first souls game but it was an 8/10 game when it came out.

Dark souls was when they really allowed the team to know what worked and what didn't.

To this day Capcom doesn't know how much it fucked up.

low bait. You forgot about the roads not leading you anywhere etc

1. Demon's Souls already existed, and the fanbase from that hyped up Dark Souls.
2. Dark Souls got a lot more talk for being a modern game that didn't bother holding your hand.
3. Co-op/invasions. Normalfags LOVE online games. Most of them only play games to socialize.

A lot of people just don't "get" Dragon's Dogma for whatever reason. Even to this day you will get newfags on Anon Babble crying about how they got reckt by the saurians and bandits early in the game (getting raped by skeletons in Firelink was heckin epic though), or complaining about how the game doesn't have a dodge button. There's also the fact that the original release had big slowdowns and more annoyance with respawning enemies since portcrystal travel was much more restricted, which made the game get middling reviews. And the j-rock opening song also turned a lot of normies off (again, they didn't "get" it). If Dark Arisen had been the original release, the game would probably have been more popular.

Overal though, I think it's more like Dark Soul's success involved a lot of luck of being at the right place at the right time, getting popular through an explosion of meme culture and some genius marketing pushing the "prepare to die" shit. Had circumstances been a little different, it might have ended as another niche title like Demon's Souls.

Dragon's Dogma is the best 6-7/10 game you'll ever play and there's like a 33% chance someone will 'get it' when they play. It wasn't until my second playthrough that it really clicked for me.
Meanwhile Dark Souls felt like somebody took the type of games the industry had moved away from and just kept iterating. The tight levels, strong designs, social elements, and ever-present challenge helped discussion spread like wildfire

Dark Souls has the wistful melancholy art angle, the cool boss angle, the "challenge" angle and enjoyed a long lifespan due to the nature of the game's RPG character system combined with the multiplayer system that enables multiple characters to have meaning.
It's a "cult classic" but only really in the sense that it only took a small measure of word of mouth to make people realise it's actually got lots of appeal to a considerable range of players.

Dragon's Dogma is a weirdo game for freaks like me. It should be noted though that Dragon's Dogma persisted in the public conciousness long after mainstream overhyped shit like Bioshock Infinite was forgotten, so it did have some impact.

The simple answer is dark souls is easier than dragons dogma. Theres a reason souls fag's quitting it & monster hunter is a real meme

Apart from real time action and medieval fantasy the 2 games aren't really that similar.
Souls to this day does not bother with having NPCs populating anything or having non ruined settlements.
DD is closer to a Bethesda game with MH/DMC combat.

The simple answer is dark souls is easier than dragons dogma.

bait used to be believable. This is just lazy.

Same. The dungeons were by far the most fun part of DD1, and the devs seemed to understand this since they made the DLC just one big ass fucking dungeon, so what do they do in the sequel? Even fewer dungeons than the first game despite a world map that is 10x bigger. Bravo.

Because Capcom is a shit developer while Fromsoft is not.

To be fair the fields in Dragon's Dogma 2 were really fucking good. Dense forests with really tall trees get me excited. Sadly, there wasn't nearly enough variety to justify how big the map was and not enough dungeons with unique loot.

No dungeons was one thing but couple it with barely any new enemies and it's a disaster.

Why did Dragon's Dogma remain niche while Dark Souls was such a huge success?

DD is for people who actually like games. It has mechanical depth and some amazing ideas, as well as an unparalleled sense of party adventure. Dark Souls is like Skyrim. It's a shallow game for casuals who want to pretend to be hardcore gamers, so naturally it's more popular with the masses.